


Plaid days

by laughingpineapple



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, Recovery, flannel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-19 11:48:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9438836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: Some days their memories still match, some days they are still the same persons and can make new ones. A wintry evening in the rarest of futures where they can grow old together.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AgentDianeEvans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentDianeEvans/gifts).



It's hard to say if Albert still remembers that one tirade on - if memory serves - “the casual indifference of these muted earth tones” and everything that flannel signified. Few thoughts can be as disheartening as reminding oneself that the Palmer case was last century and last millennium and the world has kept spinning ever since. In almost three decades, plenty of fashion disasters must've ended up crossing his path and tapping into his endless supply of spirited complaints: bright blazers, gratuitous gym shoes, abhorrent ascots, it's just statistics, Dale's warm chequered country shirt was nothing special. Isn't it tragic to be reminded that, to most people, this (just the monotone grievances, without the ending twist of a backhanded compliment that makes Dale smile now as it made him then) is the alpha and omega of Agent Rosenfield’s emotional range? Who else saw beneath it when Dale could not? Who remembers the warmth radiating from the rare admission that “on you, it works”?

 

Three decades are a blink of an eye to Dale, and a blink of an eye was a millennium, and a millennium was a century and a dodecahedron and a drop of fir pitch, but memories of the outside world were rare beyond the curtains. They stopped moving, encased in amber, and Dale kept them close.

 

Now he is back to a life where he can take a deep breath and be reasonably certain that four seconds have passed, give or take. Spaghetti takes some eight minutes to cook. Donuts dough rises for ninety, twice, which is not reality folding over but a simple matter of yeast at work. In twenty-four hours, Albert is exactly one day older than he was before. Dale checks. They search each other, they study each other as, in turn, they take their eyes off the TV with its thrilling twists and explosions to check that the other person on the couch is there, is human, is real. 

 

One day, Dale will ask about that particular memory - they have time, after all, it's still early days, whatever that means, one day but not now, words are too rough, too definite. Today, when the sun sets and the room gets cold, he takes out a prized catch from a thrift store, a blue, green and purple flannel plaid throw blanket that would have looked rustic and outmoded in Meriwether Lewis’ time. Albert watches, transfixed, and Dale keeps a steely eye contact as he summons all his solemnity to pat the blanket, unfold it and drape it on the couch.

“Warm and soft”, he mouths, playing a gambit as much as a preemptive defense, as he watches the thing land and wrap dear Albert's tired body. There is gonna be a tell, a twitch on the corner of Albert's mouth at some point, a furrowing of eyebrows, and Dale holds his breath in expectation of the inevitable, well-practiced flurry of reproaches. Please, he prays to his old friend, harboring the softest hint of a grin: bring me back to those days. I miss you so much even when you are here.

But Albert remains silent. Slowly, deliberately, basking in a sustained eye contact that would have lesser men blink, he grins back. He remembers. He remembers! And if thirty-nine seconds later, when Dale has joined him under the blanket, the reason why he wraps his arms around him and keeps him close is to hide behind a bastion that'll shield him from the gaudy plaid monstrosity, Dale isn't complaining. He can fall asleep resting his head on Albert's chest, counting the linear progression of his heartbeat, feeling his breath rustle his hair. A prized catch indeed.

 

On the following morning - it feels like seven thirty, meaning it's anything but - he can feel Albert eventually sneak out of the couch and leave him to the infamy of his flannel burrito. 

Eight minutes later, he cannot say if he is more delighted by the smoking cup of black coffee he is being handed or by Albert untangling the blanket to worm his way back by his side.


End file.
